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Reactions: Egypt Withdraws from Syria
On Saturday, Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi cut all diplomatic ties with Syria and backed a no-fly zone over the country. Deepening sectarian tensions between his Muslim Brotherhood and Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah, he also called on the latter group – which just helped the Syrian army conquer rebel fighters in the border town of Qusayr – to pull back from Syria. And with the forced closing of Syria’s embassy in Cairo, hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees are left stranded without consular services. **Andrew Bowen, Middle East scholar at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University****, put the latest developments in context.